Co-designing Transport Solutions Towards an Inclusive Public Transport in the City of Bologna

Abstract

Disabled people are undoubtedly one of the most vulnerable groups at risk of social exclusion and among the many obstacles they face there is the difficult use of public transport. The TRIPS (TRansport Innovation for disabled People needs Satisfaction) project, funded by the HORIZON2020 Research and Innovation Program, starts from field research activities and the evaluation of existing mobility and accessibility services to develop and propose co-designed solutions that allow users with disabilities to take on a leading role in the design of transport services. The project consortium is made up of users, organizations from the transport sector, specialists in the field of assistive technologies and public authorities. This paper presents original research, introducing the TRIPS theoretical framework—on which co-design is based and developed—and illustrating how it has been grounded in one of the seven project pilot contexts, the city of Bologna in Italy, with the aim of improving the inclusiveness of urban transport for persons with disabilities by empowering them in the design of transport solutions. Over the past 18 months, SRM Reti e Mobilità—local Authority for Public Transport in the Bologna area—has coordinated the pilot activities, carrying them out in collaboration with the Local User Lead (LUL), who in turn coordinates the Core User Team (CUT), a working group composed of people with disabilities who play an active role in the design of new mobility solutions and in their validation. In order to stimulate synergies towards the co-planning of inclusive mobility, SRM has also established a local Enlarged Working Group, in which local authorities, transport operators, users and associations linked to world of disability interact with the CUT in order to provide feedback on the proposed solutions and their potential implementation. The presented research is of an interventionist type: its results can be capitalized for future applications of the TRIPS theoretical framework and beyond and contribute to the research in the participatory research field.